Saturday, October 13, 2012

It's Time for Petraeus to Testify

Obama, Biden and Hillary are hiding behind an amorphous "intelligence community" to explain why they propagated the lie that a video and a demonstration led to the attack on the consulate in Benghazi.

Team Obama is now firmly committed to this story. They can't disown it or walk it back. Evidence to the contrary exists. We have testimony that members of the State Department received real-time information about the attack and knew even as it was going on that there was no demonstration and that it was a terrorist attack. They appear to be in a trap of their own setting and now is the time to spring it closed.

The question is: who speaks for the "intelligence community?" The logical person to ask is David Petraeus, the Director of the CIA. He is viewed as a hero by many who supported the war in Iraq as the man who came up with the strategy that won the insurgency.

So far, according to published reports, he has taken Team Obama's position in a briefing to members of Congress. Unfortunately for Petraeus he is in a no-win situation if he continues on this course. The video-inspired-demonstration story has been shown to be untrue. It was known to be untrue by people in the State Department from the beginning. If he testifies that the video-inspired-demonstration story was what the CIA believed, that will show that the CIA is either incompetent or that he is lying to protect the President. Which leads to two bad results.

If he's testifies that the CIA is so incompetent that they believed a false story when there is audio and video evidence in real time that shows what really happened, he will sully his personal reputation and call into question the CIA's judgement about even more import issues like the bomb-making capabilities of the Iranian regime.

According, therefore, to the Vice President our intelligence capabilities are not sophisticated or truthful enough to report accurately on an attack on a US facility by some two hundred heavily armed men in the middle of a city in a friendly country, but sophisticated and truthful enough to monitor intricate details of a hidden nuclear program undertaken in a very remote and heavily guarded location in the middle of an extremely hostile nation.

If Petraeus lies under oath he is setting himself up for criminal charges. I would not want to be in his shoes. I am sure that he has been told what to say by Team Obama. It remains to be seen what he will do.

UPDATE: I have been willing to give Petraeus the benefit of the doubt. There seems to be some evidence that he may actually be the source of the disinformation. Diana West:

Now, with so many of the adminstration's bald lies about Benghazi being exposed, PJ Tatler's Bryan Preston is asking not whether Petraeus was politicizing the intell, but whether he is "among the sources of the Benghazi deception."

For six hours, the full command structure of the Pentagon, intelligence, diplomatic and civil response sectors (along with multiple listening posts in Europe and elsewhere) of the US government watched and heard in real time as our consulate in Benghazi was under attack, as our ambassador to Libya and his hobbled security died. It's simple not credible to believe the President wasn't fully briefed at each step, unless he refused to listen. Ultimately, why Ambassador Stevens was in Benghazi or whether Secretary Clinton signed off on a refusal of Marine guards is far less important than why the President refused action. If he chose not to decide, he decided in favor of inaction, because he cannot evade his responsibility.

This is a particularly ugly story that simply must come out before the election. And it still may since the White House has lost control of the narrative.